An Idaho Republican state lawmaker has defended a bill she proposed that was signed into law earlier this year barring transgender female athletes from competing in women’s sporting competitions in the state.
In an interview last week for HBO’s monthly syndicated cable show Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, Idaho Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R-Idaho Falls) insisted that she is simply trying to level the playing field for cisgender females who are at a physiological disadvantage when it comes to competing against transgender females.
“I actually support people in making choices they feel are important to them in their lives, but this has to be based on one’s biology, one one’s sex,” she told correspondent Bernie Goldberg when he asked her if she had a “problem with transgender people.”
Ehardt said her mission is personal, as a former athlete who played basketball in college and eventually became a college coach.
She believes that allowing transgender females to compete in women’s sports denies cisgender female athletes the chance to compete and achieve success — something she believes only became available to her after the introduction of Title IX, a 1972 law barring sex discrimination that has been credited with expanding athletic opportunities for women.
“You have to understand that that’s at the heart of this legislation,” she said. “What we don’t want to do is create policies that literally will erase the history of the struggles and the triumphs that have occurred for women for the last 50 years.”
Goldberg noted that no known transgender athletes have ever competed in girls’ and women’s sports in Idaho, and asked if Ehardt was “legislating a problem that doesn’t really exist in any significant numbers.”
She replied: “There’s never a bad time to protect opportunities for girls and women.”
Backers of the law, including Ehardt, say it’s needed to prevent cisgender women from inevitably losing to those they consider “biological males,” even if the athlete has undergone hormone therapy, as required by the NCAA for any transgender athlete wishing to compete at the collegiate level.
They also insist that transgender athletes are not barred from competing in sports, but simply must compete against individuals who were assigned the same sex at birth that they were.
Opponents of the law, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, have sued to block any attempts to bar transgender athletes from competing based on their gender identity from being implemented.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Lindsay Hecox, a transgender athlete who wishes to join the cross country team at Boise State University, which would make her the first openly transgender athlete in Idaho to compete in women’s sports.
The other plaintiff is an anonymous cisgender female athlete in high school who believes she will be subjected to invasive genetic testing to “prove” her gender if competitors accuse her of being transgender due to a lack of stereotypically feminine traits or behavior.
In August, a federal district judge issued an injunction blocking Ehardt’s bill from taking effect, finding that the law was crafted with the intent of excluding transgender athletes, rather than promoting equal athletic opportunities for cisgender women.
The segment for Real Sports also included comment from Chase Strangio, a transgender man and lawyer for the national ACLU, which is co-representing the plaintiffs along with its Idaho chapter.
Strangio says that athletics provide transgender people “a sense of solidarity and camaraderie” with their teammates, as well as a sense of belonging, that would disappear if they aren’t allowed to compete based on their gender identity.
The segment was scheduled to air last Tuesday, but an HBO spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman newspaper that the story was no longer scheduled to run this month, as “there are revisions that need to be made.”
The spokesperson did not share a new run date, and the Real Sports website contains no mention of the story.
A Florida school district agreed to return 36 books that were censored to school library shelves as part of a settlement in response to a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit filed, in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, by the authors of the children's book And Tango Makes Three, as well as three students and their parents, alleged that the Nassau County School Board wrongly removed the books from shelves in November 2023 without holding any public hearings on their proposed removal.
In doing so, the plaintiffs claimed, the board violated Florida's "Sunshine Law," which requires all public boards and commissions to make their meetings open to the public, provide reasonable notice of when meetings are occurring, and record the minutes of meetings, including details of discussions or debates during the meetings.
Charles Moran, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans, penned an editorial in Newsweek slamming the Democratic presidential ticket as the "wrong choice" for LGBTQ Americans.
The leader of the nation's gay Republican group attacks Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as extreme and beholden to the interests of left-wing interest groups.
"Their agenda goes far beyond what our community has sought for decades, which is equality for LGBT Americans under the law," Moran writes. "In reality, Harris and Walz are crusaders for a small but powerful cabal of the LGBT Left which wants to erase the concept of biological sex from society, expose young children to overtly sexualized and ideological content, and strip parents of their rights to make critical decisions about their children."
New Hampshire State Representative David Love (R-Derry) must pay two drag queens $100,000 each and publicly retract remarks he made in 2022, calling them a danger to children.
Robert Champion, who performs as drag queen Monique Toosoon, and Michael McMahon, who performs as Clara Devine, sued Love in April 2022, saying he had defamed them in remarks he made during a hearing on a bill he introduced calling for libraries to conduct background checks on employees and volunteers.
The performers contended that the bill -- which Love cast as an effort to protect children from being in proximity to sex offenders -- was an attempt to block Drag Queen Story Hour events from taking place.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.